The four-year-old migratory bird, according to the post-mortem examination report conducted by veterinary teams, died of long term starvation which precipitated systemic organs failure.<\/p>\n
The raptor bird was rescued on Monday January 20 in Siaya by Mr Walter Oloo, who reported the sighting to the KWS Siaya County office.\u00a0The bird was then taken to the KWS Veterinary Department in Nairobi and later transferred to the Raptor Rehabilitation Centre.\u201cBy the time the bird was delivered to the city, it had been severely dehydrated, weak and emaciated from the long flight and minor injuries while trapped by the fishing net. It weighed 950g against the normal range of 1.3-1.8kg weight of an adult osprey,\u201d KWS said.<\/p>\n
Release back to the wild<\/strong><\/p>\n After recovery, KWS was planning to release the bird back to the wild by returning it to where it was rescued in the Lake Victoria catchment area. This was to help it\u00a0not lose its bearings on its return flight Northwards in early March.\u00a0The bird\u2019s origin had been established from a referring ring on its leg. It showed that it was ringed in a museum in Finland.According to Birdlife International, one in five of all the world\u2019s bird species migrate. Every migration is an epic and often perilous feat of endurance.<\/p>\n Different types of birds take routes of widely varying lengths and while some round-trip migrations can be as long as 70,811 kms\u00a0equivalent to almost two round-the-world trips, others are much shorter.National Geographic details that some birds even migrate on foot and cover thousands of miles moving across continents.<\/p>\n The risky migration journey often sees the migratory birds taking direct yet dangerous routes that expose them to storms, predators, as well as tough navigation conditions.\u201cMigrations that cut across deserts or open water are especially risky\u201d, National Geographic notes.In such a perilous journey, some birds get caught up in storms killing thousands and forcing an entire sky full of them to stop at the first land they encounter.\u201cBirdwatchers revel in these events (known as fallouts).<\/p>\n Colourful warblers, orioles, and tanagers decorate every bush and provide eye-level views as they forage ravenously to recover from the difficult flight,\u201d it notes.Over the years, the exciting phenomenon of migratory birds that transverse continents have been disrupted by increasing hazards such as habitat loss, overuse of pesticides, hunting and trapping of birds in their stop-over grounds.<\/p>\n Organisations such as Nature Kenya and Birdlife International have also highlighted fatal collisions with buildings and radio towers as a challenge to migratory birds that fly at night.<\/p>\n Why birds are ringed<\/strong><\/p>\n According to KWS Paul Udoto, the ringing of birds is usually done for conservation purposes and to know the movements and habitats of migratory birds.The exercise is also aimed at boosting conservation of habitats where the birds spent most of their times after travelling for miles across the continent at certain times.<\/p>\n \u201cMigratory birds travel miles of kilometres across the continents every year and ringing exercises are usually conducted to trace migratory patterns of these birds and the places they spent most of their times at particular season for conservation purposes. Once established where these birds prefer, awareness for purposes of conservation is usually boosted in such areas,\u201d Mr Udoto said.<\/p>\n Kenya, he added, is a signatory to the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), whose conference of parties is to be held next month in India and one of the key mandates is to ensure the conservation of migratory bird species.\u00a0\u00a0Bird-ringing in Kenya is often done at Ngulia in Tsavo every other year in October and November, during which migratory birds from Europe are identified.\u00a0\u00a0There are seven documented seven catchment areas of migratory birds among them Lake Nakuru, Naivasha, Bogoria, Elementaita and Lake Victoria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A bird\u00a0(pictured) that flew\u00a06,947.5 km to Kenya has died.The osprey, a migratory bird flew from eastern Finland and landed in Usalu Village, Siaya County.\u00a0The death of the bird was announced by the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS)\u00a0days after it was rescued on January 20, this year. \u201cWe regret to announce the death of the rescued migratory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":1480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8,9],"tags":[899,771,900],"class_list":["post-1479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-homepage-english","category-miscellaneous","tag-birdfinland","tag-osprey","tag-siaya"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.standardmedia.co.ke\/images\/monday\/lyrcdjs6ezudup5e2ecbf96a80c.jpg\")